I love the 4/4/4 format.  To explain a little, it’s a tournament run in SA where participants can play any of a Morning, Afternoon or Evening session of 4 games.  8 games in a day is pretty standard and the 4/4/4 format gives people a chance to play during the day or start after lunch or even just pop in for a quick 4 games.  This year we had 10 brave players committing to playing all 12 games (and it was the first time that I’d play all 12.)  Huge props to all of those players.

The nitty-gritty of it has been fine tuned and refined by Adam Kretschmer.  But the key things of note: pairings are done as an open Swiss event.  Each session, prizes are given out to winners in ratings bands depending on the size of the sessions and there are overall prizes for the entire tournament.  Daniel Piechnick showed this year that it’s possible to snag an overall prize despite only playing 8 games, finishing on 7 wins with the best margin. Players joining the tournament for the afternoon or evening are given half wins (for pairings puposes) for the games missed for pairings purposes so they enter in the middle of the Swiss and likely playing someone else joining for the same session allowing them to quickly find their level and not entering from the bottom that would lead to uneven pairings.

One highlight for me was finding the bonus from the following position:

Hearty Congratulations to Francoise Finlayson who took out top spot winning the overall competition and to all the session winners and prize-getters.